About 1.3 trillion yuan (US$157 billion) will be needed for
environmental protection in the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan,
a ranking official in the State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA) announced on Tuesday.
The amount for the years 2006 to 2010 is a huge increase over
the budget for the 10th Five-Year Plan, which is about 700 billion
yuan (US$84.6 billion).
Speaking at a two-day international seminar on environmental
protection financing that opened Tuesday in Beijing, Chen Bin, vice
director of SEPA's Planning and Financing Department, admitted that
targeted sum for investment from 2001-05 will not be met.
By the end of 2002, about 28 percent of the 229.7 billion yuan
(US$27.8 billion) planned for key pollution control has not been
realized.
Despite rises in the past two years, Chen said, actual
investment will not be more than 70 percent of the planned total by
the end of the year.
Priority will be given now to capacity building for environment
supervision and management, treatment of hazardous waste and urban
sewage and rubbish, and desulfurization of coal-burning power
plants, according to Chen.
Chen's office is now preparing the draft of the country's
five-year environmental protection plan for the 2006–2010 period.
They expect investment in environmental protection during the
period to be 1.4 to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product.
According to Chen, a nation in a stage of rapid economic
development needs to allocate at least 1.0 to 1.5 percent of GDP to
getting pollution under control, but only when investment reaches 3
percent of GDP can a country improve its environment quality
noticeably.
At Tuesday's seminar, Xia Guang, director of SEPA's Policy
Research Center, suggested that the government offer help to small
and medium-sized companies with their financing for pollution
control.
According to Xia, such companies contribute to half of the
nation's industrial pollution.
(China Daily March 30, 2005)